


skin splits to bone

by renvember



Series: on my chest, on my heart [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Piglin Technoblade, ig?? canon is loose, we FINDING that family girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27869550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renvember/pseuds/renvember
Summary: Wandering turns into less of a desperate chase from monster to monster and more into a controlled hunt as he learns the world he lives in. Fighting comes naturally to him, the ease of combat clear as crystal as he forces his way forward.He’s comfortable with where he is in the pecking order, a roaming entity amidst the dull burgundy landscape.It changes in a single breath, just as how fire and explosions repaint the rock around him. There one moment, gone in the next.(Here is how you survive, little boar. You take your claws, your teeth, and you slash and bite until they stay down. You dig your heels into the ground. You do not break.)
Relationships: Dave | Technoblade & Phil Watson, Dave | Technoblade & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF)
Series: on my chest, on my heart [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2051724
Comments: 12
Kudos: 600





	skin splits to bone

**Author's Note:**

> uhh if you're one of my fe mutuals just pretend you didnt see this. let me stay vibing. anyway. everyone has done a feral baby techno and phil meet up. i am doing one now. it is my time. blame my sweet beta evie, they enabled me :')
> 
> this isn't written about the people bc that is. so not my scene, im perceiving them as characters only. AND no shipping ever in this lane. thank you and good night

The first memory he is fully cognizant of begins like this: heat beating down on his small frame as he pulls himself up from the bastion. A place he would only call home as a singular result of his birth, not with any attachment. His world opens up once he’s made it on top, looking out at the lava lake and to the great beyond past that.

The first thing he learns is that Piglins are fiercely territorial, the ones he strays into lashing out as he crosses their invisible boundaries. Every other creature he encounters reflects this notion, turning hostile to his presence as soon as they notice him. He doesn't know how much of that choice is active; is it out of fear or base instincts? 

He runs through different landscapes with the adrenaline of something _more_ contending with his base survival instinct when a skeleton pulls back its bow and aims. 

(Here is how you survive, little boar. You take your claws, your teeth, and you slash and bite until they stay down. You dig your heels into the ground. You do not break.) 

He raids fungi, fortresses, and other structures along his way. Nothing is too appealing to stay for. The most brilliant thing he finds is a sword, with a sharp blade that shines darkly in his hands, reflecting the glow of the lava down below and fire cast by the blazes over the fortress. The weight is easy on his thin arms, something that fills him with a heady sort of power. 

The next time a stray skeleton shoots at him, he fights back, taking his sword and slashing its brittle bones to dust.

This is the pivotal turning point, the moment where he becomes. 

Wandering turns into less of a desperate chase from monster to monster and more into a controlled hunt as he learns the world he lives in. Fighting comes naturally to him, the ease of combat clear as crystal as he forces his way forward. 

(This is what victory tastes like, little boar. Isn't it intoxicating?)

He’s comfortable with where he is in the pecking order, a roaming entity amidst the dull burgundy landscape. 

It changes in a single breath, just as how fire and explosions repaint the rock around him. There one moment, gone in the next.

There is someone unusual in his path today. Not a piglin, but too stocky to be a skeleton offshoot. Armored too, as they navigate forward, in an unfamiliar white metal. But on their head, there’s a sharp cut of gold, curved in a circle over another oddly shaped green hat. He huffs. It’s a shitty excuse for a helmet, but enough that the other piglins don’t bother with it. 

It’s fascinating, watching the thing wander around. He can’t figure out their goal, shadowing quietly after them as they move from vein to vein of gold. They scrape all the gold they can muster from the stone and smelt it into a large enough lump to turn around and hand it to the closest piglin.

But, well, whatever they’re trying to do must be _working_ because even though the piglins just grunt and hand them baseless junk in return, they smile at them, beaming all the while.

Like he said, something fascinating for sure. How tone deaf can they be?

He follows them across the wastes, almost snorting amusedly at the line of torches they leave in their wake. They’ll all be swept away by a lava flow, pushed over by a hoglin, or meet some other conclusive fate if they don’t round back quickly enough. They don’t seem to notice him on their trek, only pausing in their gold mining for the odd quartz deposit they stumble across. 

He doesn’t try to help them either, only smiling quaintly when a hoard of hoglins emerges from the crimson forest, furious for encroaching on their territory. Then they manage to slip into a whole nest of skeletons, the undead pulling themselves together swiftly enough to charge and land full arrow shots as they recover from the blunder. 

He blinks down at the sheet of metal they use to defend themself, something back in his mind registering as pure _want_ when he looks at it. He shakes off the emotion easily enough, but the possessiveness leaves a foul taste in his mouth. He doesn’t like the more driven parts of himself, the things he can only control with a learned finesse. So he shoves the urge down and crouches lower in wait. It’s an interesting tool, one he’s never seen before, he rationalizes. Compelling.

Miraculously, the thing stays alive through everything, which is a feat on its own. 

He trails them all the way back to the empty wastes, following until it reaches their entry point. Huh. A portal of some kind, with a half-built shield of some grey stone defending it from the open air. He waits patiently enough for them to gather their things, sitting deathly still until he’s certain they went through the portal. As soon as he has that certainty, he shoots up into a sprint to peruse the junk left behind. Mostly a ton of netherrack, to his own dismay. But while he assesses the inventory, he can’t push off the dull purple glow bathing the half-room in light for too long, the portal practically begging him for assessment. 

There is a moment between the dim glow of the portal and him, infinitesimal in length but eons long in thought. There’s only one way for immediate, definite answers on its purpose, after all. 

He trudges through, allowing the purple glow to envelop him.

The first thing that registers is a searing pain, tearing through him as he trips through the dimensional haze. The second is how _bright_ everything is, rending his eyes apart as well as the rest of his body. He catches himself with his sword, leaning against it for balance as he tries his damnedest to stay upright. He can hear it scrambling ahead of him, but can't bring his head up to even try to face it. 

Finally, _finally,_ his vision clears well enough for some color to bleed through the sharp whiteness. Green, a lot of green. He has to blink a couple of times just to comprehend it, but even then he isn't entirely sure he's seeing straight. He's startled out of his stupor with a blade at his neck, the creature from earlier shouting at him. Nothing he can parse, certainly. 

The dizzy spell fades as he feels he can move his muscles again. He blinks once, twice, to stare up at them. They don't look too much older than him. But then again, he doesn't know how… non-piglins age. He doesn't know how most things age, come to think of it. Just that he does. 

The thing _coos_ , almost, and he recoils in disgust as they make odd sounds. He doesn't understand a word of it, shrinking back as they extend their hand. He holds up his sword between them, a sharp and lethal barrier.

Their eyes widen, almost moving to ghost their hand over the blade before thinking better of it. Good, then. They’ve both reached some kind of baseline of understanding. 

They gingerly pull back, dropping their own sword to the ground. He frowns. They hold eye contact with him, scooping up the hilt with their foot and kicking away, too far from reach to be of any immediate use. 

They’ve slowed down the constant train of unfamiliar speech, calling out words slowly as if _that_ will bring any improvement. He snorts at them, the greater part of himself demanding he lash out while their guard is down but… maybe it's an act of pity that urges him to stand down or, worse, a moment of weakness. 

Or maybe he’s just a fool then, as something else (just as green and vile as the rest of this place, really) stumbles out from behind, hissing. He barely has time to lunge, brace himself either, as it takes a short breath and detonates.

The explosion rolls over his side, forcing him to the ground with a loud _boom_. He can shrug off the pain for a moment, to regain his bearings. He rolls back towards the portal, his side protesting painfully but it’ll be okay, he can retreat to a fortress, gather netherwart and ghast tears for a regeneration potion, be rid of this odd nightmare– 

The purple glass linking the dimensions is gone, with only the black obsidian frame left to show for it. 

He tries to get up again because he can’t let the shock of the moment get to him. He– he can’t die here, where there’s even less there for him than anywhere in his home dimension. He claws futilely at the dark stone, trying his best to force some reaction to no avail. 

The creature drops down behind him (when did they manage to get so close?), hands gripping his shoulder as they speak again, loud and rushed where they were careful softness before. He shrugs them off best he can to limited success, but ultimately, there’s nothing he can do to grapple with the accumulating exhaustion clouding his mind as he swings off balance and falls to the ground. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


And.

Well.

The last thing he expects from there is to wake up. 

Everything’s still much too bright. The room he blinks awake to is too soft to be at the bottom of some lava pool, even if the light clotting around him feels akin to the burning pain. He squints his eyes shut and blindly feels around for his sword, clawing at the pillowy texture underneath to no avail. Panic catches up on him, but for once, it doesn’t seem to do any good. Nothing to fight, nowhere to run. He slowly opens one eye, then another to adjust to the brightness bathing the room. It’s… quaint. A little boring, honestly, with finely cut slabs of brown material maintaining the roof. 

He’s interrupted by the heavy swing of a door, a curtain of light blazing over his eyelids. He jumps back, burying himself between the makeshift cot and the wall. He resists the crowing temptation to screw his eyes shut again, ducking as low as he can to blink up at the figure in the doorway.

He tenses as they stride over to him, bracing himself for a blow. He can’t do much to fight back (his reflexes are completely shot, his movements too sluggish to put up a fight). But they gently lay their hand over his forehead, brushing away the pink curls of hair. They nod, talking in a light voice and pulling away to drop their heavy bag of materials by the paneled cabinets. He eyes them distrustfully as they move around the house noisily, unpacking and depositing the contents across chests and drawers, seemingly manifesting space everywhere in this tiny room.

They pull out a bright root vegetable, taking a bite out of it before holding another out to him. He shrinks back against the wall. 

They repeat themself again, slower.

He tilts his head, uncomprehending of what they’re asking. After a long moment, he reaches his own hand up, miming the gesture back at them. They stare at him, echoing the thought again. 

He grunts at them, not sure what else to do.

They frown at him but push the food into his open hand, an easy enough cue for him to tear into the meat of the vegetable, having finally noticed the deep pits of hunger that have sunken in during his period of unconsciousness.

The burned half of his jaw protests painfully as he digs his teeth in, and it isn't until after he finishes that he takes a moment to assess the damage. The length of skin going down as far as his right shoulder is charred. But his body doesn't hurt like true burns, from lava dripping onto skin: this pain is surface level. He massages his neck, only wincing a little at the shots of pain. He pulls himself upward, tottering slowly to the counter while leaning against the wall for support. He’s certain, then. There’s no way he would survive as he is right now, he’s at this thing’s mercy for the foreseeable future. At least until he can find his sword. 

He’s so caught up that he doesn’t look up until he hears the buzzing of a brewing stand in front of him. They're moving quickly and surely, boiling down components and dumping them into bottles with ease. He only recognizes half of what they’re doing– magma cream, netherwart, and then some binding compound? He loses track of their progress as they pull out more alien ingredients. All he can do is watch quietly. They notice him waiting there, nodding and smiling at him before returning to their work.

After a while, they seem satisfied with their workings, pouring a salve into a smaller glass jar. Then they turn back to him, offering him the jar. He holds it cautiously, staring down the 

They swipe their hand over the cream, then rub it onto their arm, looking expectantly at him.

Oh.

He takes a small dollop and rubs it over the burns on his face. It's cool to the touch, stinging a little but numbing the pain. It only takes a single moment not spent forced to grit his teeth with every small breeze to have him digging his claws into the salve and lathering it all over the wound.

He's able to let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, having been so tense. He looks up at them, a thank-you almost bubbling from his mouth before he shuts it down. 

They press a hand to their chest, pronouncing the syllable slowly. “Phil,” they tap their chest again, repeating. “I’m Phil.”

Then they point over his own chest and give him a questioning look. It takes him a moment to understand. Names, they're giving names, now. 

He snarls out the approximation of what the other piglins called him in passing. Hissed and growled, more like, a harsh word usually reserved as an insult rather than a name. 

Phil frowns, somewhat flinching by the ferocity of his tone, but gestures for him to say it again. He obliges.

“Tech… no..?” Phil tries to echo, his brow narrowed in concentration.

“Techno,” he repeats, testing the feel of the word in his mouth. Not quite right, but it would do.

“Techno,” Phil says again. And it sounds… kinder in his voice, not carrying the weight of its true meaning.

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: this doc is labeled "pig man babey -- found family????????" with exactly that many question marks, but you know there is no question about it. there is.. some more that i will work on between csh chapters bc i want to finish that so bad. hope everyone is doing well :D
> 
> if u are also in mcyt hell, come yell abt it with me @renvember on tumblr!! stay safe <3


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